Ai-doo

by Backpacking Dad

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“Ai-doo is coming to get me!!”

“I’m sharing my dinner with Ai-doo.”

Sometimes Ai-doo is a baby. Sometimes Ai-doo is a cricket. Mostly Ai-doo is Erin’s imaginary friend.

She tells long stories detailing their exploits together, and Ai-doo tends to be a trouble-maker. Sometimes she is afraid of him (her?) but usually they are just playing together.

We’ve wondered, Emily and I, where Ai-doo comes from. He showed up in the early summer, and there are a number of songs Erin listens to that have the phrase “I do” in them. It’s possible she just invented a name.

But I suspect Ai-doo has a more sinister origin than a simple children’s song or a child’s imagination. I suspect that Ai-doo is less an imaginary, than an incorporeal friend.

Because, you see, in the early summer we went to Disneyland as part of our Southern California Road Trip. And at Disneyland, as Erin knows, the ghosts all live “at the haunted smanshon”. And in the bridal room in the Haunted Mansion there dwells the haunt of a groom, whose form is revealed as he pops up from behind a box to declaim: “I do!”

And as the narrator promises, warns, or curses as you prepare to disembark from your doom buggy, we ought to beware hitchhiking ghosts.

Because surely, certainly, a ghost has followed us home.

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  • talea
    Well, my niece skipped the imaginary friend phrase and, instead, became a dog for a year. She named herself Dogfood.

    Dogfood made herself tags out of construction paper and a leash and collar out of ribbon. She "nursed" stuffed puppies (while her mom was nursing her new baby brother). She insisted on being taken for daily walks ("don't forget the poop bags!)" She told her granny to tie her up or she might "bite" the dishwasher repairman. She barked at you if you used her real name but would talk if you called her Dogfood. She often went to all fours to get around. She took her vitamin in cheese just like my dog who was ill and had to take a lot of pills. She turned a craft table into her feeding table (my dog had a raised feeding station that was green as was her table). Food had to be prepared or cut into bone shapes. Mama and Dadda became "my owners." She quit sleeping in her parents' bed and started sleeping at the foot of the bed (like dogs do). She actually persuaded a nanny to buy her fake "dog fur" at a craft store and then asked her mom to make her a dog suit. She used to "chase cars" during recess at preschool. (Another parent was overheard to say: "I want to meet the mom of the girl who turned my son into a dog.")

    The mythology she invented was deep and layered and incredibly charming.

    And it lasted almost a year, until she went into the ocean on vacation as Dogfood, got stung by a jellyfish, and came out of the water as Wave, the Crab. Wave lasted a week or so and then my niece came back.

    As Dr. Beatrice, the vet.

    She's 10 now and totally normal, albeit still a pretty creative thinker.
  • I only had 1 child with an imaginary friend and it was Patch the dog from 101Dalmations II Patch's London Adventure. (2003) he loved that movie and Patch came to live here in Canada with us too. He eventually left but i dont' know why?
  • I maginary friends are scary enough without having some veiled reference to marriage at their core.
  • I used to pretend I had an imaginary friend when all of my other friends had one. Apparently having a real friend right there with you wasn't good enough, so we took on imaginary ones....
  • My son has had an imaginary brother (Brant) since he was about 4 1/2. Someone told me it's a sign of higher than average intelligence. I'm going to go with that!
  • Spooooky. My just-turned5-year-old's imaginary friends are Buzz Lightyear and Jack-the-Horsey. Not nearly as sinister.
  • Imaginary friends scare the shit out of me. Just saying.
  • my youngest has imaginary friends, sisters and children. Sometimes just one, sometimes two, but more often it's 1000, exactly. I have to hold the car door open while all 1000 invisible friends or children get in. When they are singular, then they get named. But the names change on a whim. The only consistent part about that is that start with an E more often than not.
  • My daughter's imaginary friends were always phonetic plays, usually "Lena," but then all the dolls and bears were named "Leela," Leeta," "Leeneepa," "Lailee-o," etc. It made sort of a song that ran from day to day, and I seriously worried about her language development. Now that she's well past that and still normal, I hear other parents observing similar phenomena.

    Always nice to know I'm not the only one and that my kid's boringly average. Never liked Lake Wobegon anyway.

    X

    Supa
  • Who you gonna call? http://blip.fm/~ejor1
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